Black and grey tattoo of a compass rose combined with a dreamcatcher and an arrow pointing north, with teal accents, on the ankle.

Compass and dreamcatcher on an ankle

Geometric · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W is combined with a dreamcatcher, where an arrow runs vertically through a circle of woven lines and three feathers hang from its base. The linework is bold and clean, with grey shading on the arrow, feathers and rope-textured rim, and fine interlocking circles inside the hoop. Teal highlights on the compass needle and feather tips are the only colour against black and grey, and the design sits centred on the top of the foot near the ankle.

Geometric Ankle Compass Dreamcatcher Arrow Feather Circle Geometric pattern North East South West

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ísla Varrow had surveyed the eastern marshes three times, and each time the river had moved. On the morning the king's messenger came up the causeway she was still kneeling in the reeds with her brass compass on a board, its needle trembling north as though it had something urgent to say.

Keep reading

"The king wants the road to Harrowmere finished by Midsummer," the messenger said, looking anywhere but at the water. "He does not want to hear about rivers."

Ísla did not argue. She unwrapped the old dreamcatcher her grandmother had left her, a willow hoop with a rope-textured rim and a web of fine interlocking rings. A blunt arrow ran through its centre, and three feathers hung from its base. Her grandmother had called it a map that caught weather. Ísla had thought it sentiment. Now she laid it over her survey sheet and sighted along the arrow, north to south, the feathers pointing where the flood had gone.

The lines of the web matched the bends she had been recording for a month. The river was not wandering. It was following a seam of old sand beneath the reeds, the same path it had cut before the kingdom had a name, and every road the king had drawn crossed it at the wrong angle. She wrote the figures in the margin, one small neat column, and her hand did not shake.

When the messenger returned at dusk, Ísla handed him a clean sheet. The road ran east of the marsh, bent wide around the old sand, and cost twice what the king wanted to pay. In the corner she drew the compass rose and, beneath the S, wrote her grandmother's rule in plain ink: go where the water already goes. Then she packed the arrow away, and the feathers swung against the board as she lifted it, their teal tips catching the last of the light.